BBC Online :
President Vladimir Putin has warned again that Ukrainian troops must withdraw from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region or Russia will seize it, rejecting any compromise over how to end the war in Ukraine.
“Either we liberate these territories by force, or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories,” he told India Today. Moscow controls some 85% of Donbas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out ceding territory.
Putin’s comments come after Donald Trump said his negotiators discussing a US peace plan believed Russia’s leader “would like to end the war” after Tuesday’s talks in Moscow.
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow, was due to meet Ukraine’s team in Florida.
Trump said Tuesday’s talks in the Kremlin were “reasonably good”, adding it was too soon to say what would happen as “it does take two to tango”.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Moscow was awaiting a response from Washington following the meeting in Russia.
“We are now waiting for the reaction of our American colleagues to the discussion we had on Tuesday,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov was quoted as saying by RIA.
He added there were no plans for a call between Putin and Trump, and no date had been set for a new meeting with Witkoff.
The original iteration of the US peace plan proposed to hand over areas of the Donbas still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Putin – but the Witkoff team presented a modified version in Moscow.
In his India Today interview ahead of a state visit to Delhi, Putin said he had not seen the new version before his talks with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
“That’s why we had to go over every point, that’s why it took so long,” the Kremlin leader said.
He also said Moscow disagreed with parts of the US plan.
“At times we said that yes, we can discuss this, but to that we can’t agree,” Putin said.
He did not name the sticking points. At least two significant points of contention remain – the fate of Ukrainian territory seized by Russian forces and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser and key negotiator Yuri Ushakov earlier said straight after the talks that they produced “no compromise” on ending the war.
Ushakov also implied that the Russian negotiating position had been strengthened thanks to what Moscow said were its recent successes on the battlefield.
